Our Vision

Mainstream health care in the 21st Century is poised to expand beyond the historical constraints placed upon it by biomedical reductionism.  Hospitals and health centres need to be transformed into places of healing, not just places of conventional disease management.  They need to offer a wide range of interventions (from the conventional to the more esoteric), so that an individual's needs for diagnosis and causal analysis, therapeutic intervention, recovery, guided self-healing and ongoing health maintenance can be provided from one place (or through a linked network of places with strong referral and communication mechanisms). At the heart of the help offered to each individual must be an understanding of his/her unique soul development, and his/her unique needs for soul evolution. This must be combined with an appropriate selection of orthodox and complementary diagnostic and therapeutic techniques, all given with love, compassion and healing.

Several strands of development have helped to bring us to this point of necessary health care expansion:  

• A holistic health care "revolution" has already taken place within the private sector. Over the past couple of decades, there has been a phenomenal expansion in the availability of a wide range of healing disciplines, from those that sit relatively close to conventional health care to those that are more esoteric, and akin to the techniques used in the healing temples of old.  This expansion has largely been driven by consumer demand, with the healing disciplines meeting needs that are not currently met by conventional healthcare.  However, many of these healing disciplines are still only available to those who can afford to pay for practitioners' services out of their own pockets.

• Conventional health care providers have become more sympathetic to the growth in holistic health care, in part because of the increase in consumer demand and in part because of their own (or their families') personal experience of healing. There is also a growing library of evidence of efficacy for some of the healing disciplines.  However, to date there have been only marginal changes in the provision of mainstream health care towards genuinely holistic approaches. Our very conservative and conventionally-minded health care institutions are reluctant to open up to the new/old approaches to healing, often resorting to arguments about "insufficient scientific evidence" to justify this.

• The very foundations of scientific materialism, which underpins contemporary biomedical reductionism, were shaken during the 20th century. Advances in mathematics and physics have transformed science's understanding of ultimate reality, away from the West's classical mechanical view of the Cosmos, towards one that draws parallels with the mystical philosophies of other cultures. Developments in science and spirituality are now converging towards a new holistic scientific paradigm, and the consequences of this will be just as revolutionary as the paradigm shift that ushered in the first scientific revolution.  However, unlike the first revolution (which rejected the previous religious view of the Cosmos), the second scientific revolution will not reject the fruits of the materialistic paradigm that it will replace.  Positive developments arising from the endeavours of scientific materialism will be kept, but they will be re-interpreted from within the new holistic paradigm, where they will find their rightful (and more meaningful) place.

All of this points to a much needed transformation of both science and health care. This transformation has been unfolding gradually for some time, but it is now necessary to bring it into sharper focus.  The Rata Foundation will be helping in this direction by supporting the following activities:

• Exploring the new holistic scientific paradigm, including such aspects as: the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the material world; the soul and its expression in the world of form; and the nature (and measurement) of organising and healing forces within living systems.

• Clarifying the value and contribution of qualitative research methodologies, alongside quantitative research, in helping us to explore and understand the therapeutic processes involved in holistic health care.

• Helping to establish key complementary therapy disciplines as strong, independent health care professions. Supporting intra-professional audit and research, led from within the professions themselves.

• Intensifying the training of conventional health care practitioners in complementary and alternative medicine, and in holistic approaches to health care.

• Setting up clinical trials in key therapeutic areas, to evaluate the efficacy of particular complementary therapies in managing specific conditions.

• Developing complementary and alternative services within mainstream health care that can be evaluated to determine their contribution to health care provision, including their effectiveness and outcomes.

• Establishing experimental, "leading edge" multi-professional orthodox/complementary healing centres. These will allow different health care disciplines to work together pragmatically and synergistically, while extending their therapeutic horizons through research.